Empire: World History - 234. Battle of the Boyne: Clash of Two Kings (Ep 2)

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

The Restoration reinstates the monarchy in England, Scotland & Ireland, and Irish Catholics believe that they will get their lands back for their loyalty to the king. And when the openly Catholic King James II succeeds his older brother, they are even more hopeful. But English Protestants fear that his reign will lead to a Catholic dynasty, and invite the Dutch William of Orange to take the throne. James II flees to France and gathers troops to back his cause. He arrives on the coast of Ireland in 1689 to reclaim his crown. When news of this reaches Parliament, William of Orange heads to Ireland to meet his enemy on the battlefield. In the Boyne Valley near Dublin, the two kings clash in a battle that continues to be memorialised in Ireland today. But was it that militarily important? And how did the Battle of the Boyne play into the chessboard of European geopolitics? Listen as Anita and William are joined once again by Professor Jane Ohlmeyer to discuss how the Battle of the Boyne shaped Protestant identity in Ireland.  _____________ Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, and a weekly newsletter! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk  Blue Sky: @empirepoduk  X: @empirepoduk goalhanger.com Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpirepoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durhampool. We are joined once more by Jane Olmeier, author of Making Empire. The most patient woman on the planet. When we said that last time, we were really testing her.

She's patient last time. Can I just tell her? This marvellous book, and if you're interested in what we're talking about, it is all contained in this magnificent tone. That Jane has written. Jane Ormeyer's Making Empire, Ireland, imperialism, and the early modern world. In the last episode, we really spent a lot of time talking about Cromwell and the two decades of horror that Irish people go through.

Can we just talk about how it is. ends because it's sort of 10 years after the conquest of Ireland that, you know, Oliver Cromwell is no more, but it is a quite grisly end to his saga as well. Tell us about that. Well, Cromwell dies of malaria actually in 1659 and... Malaria? Is that the kind of the malarial swabs of Cambridge? Cambridge, exactly. They had them, yeah. In Kent and in Cambridge, there was lots of malaria. Yeah, absolutely. Can I do go on. Shut up. Shut to talk. Go on. And his son, who's known to history as time, he's known to history as tumble down Dick succeeds him. Now, he doesn't last for very long. And then we see the army basically

going to Charles the second. I'm not letting you get away with that brief, but tumble down Dick. Why? Well, because he was such a disaster. I mean, I mean, and it wasn't supposed to be a dynasty, the Cromwell dynasty, but still the son succeeds Cromwell doesn't last. The army moves in, restores the Stuart dynasty, Charles II, whose father, Charles I, has been executed in 1649, He's been in the continent, basically, in exile for the 1650s. He's brought back. And when he comes back, they make a point of basically digging Cromwell up. Cromwell was buried in Westminster Abbey.

He's dug up, and his body is just scattered. We don't know. But his head allegedly ends up in Cambridge, in Sydney, Sussex College. But apparently, it's been moved. Anita tells me. Well, yes. Well, I sort of mentioned this in the last episode, that Huntington, which was his constituency, also John Major's constituency,

you know, they have a museum and they very proudly have an exhibition, and I thought they had his head, but I have subsequently looked it up, and I don't want to give you hashtag fake news. It's a death mask of the head, which was taken from the dismembered head, which is now in Huntington's Museum, and it will be on display until the 30th of March, the death mask. So where's the head. We still haven't found where the head is.

We don't know where the head is. We don't know where the head is. So there was a story that it ended up, certainly the body, the trunk, ended up in my local parish church in Chiswick, in London, in St. Nicholas Church down in London. I think it was all cut up, William. I don't think they would have had the trunk. The sisters lived in Chiswick, which is why the trunk ended up in the buried secretly in the crypt of St. Nicholas in Chisic. That's the story. So I mean, it's interesting you say that it was because they didn't want a place of worship for Cromwell. What I had heard from my less than reputable sources was that Charles II was so angry with him. that he wanted to hang him and he couldn't hang him because he was dead.

So he could only sort of like desecrate the body. No, that's true as well. And that's the best that he could do. Yeah, that's also true. There we go. My sources, you can chat to me again in the pub. I will believe everything you say as usual. Okay.

Now, this is 1659. The year after Cromwell's body goes northwest and south and east, we should talk about this thing that I did say was on everybody's iPhone. And since then, we've done an experiment among our own team, some people's iPhone, the 12th of July, which is, marked as Battle of the Boyne. There is a sectarian bias in iPhone somewhere. Catholic iPhones are different from Protestant iPhone. Can I just say it is interesting that some of ours have it and some of ours do not have it, but it is a national holiday, a national bank holiday in Northern Ireland

to commemorate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. And that is really what is going to lead us in conversation today. So Jane, lead us forward from the restoration. Charles II arrives back, tumble down dick is dispatched off somewhere. What happens next as far as Ireland is concerned? Well, the king is restored to the throne of his three kingdoms of England, Ireland and Scotland, and the Irish are delighted because they think, oh my goodness, we've been loyal to the king during the civil war. It's time to get our lands back.

So you have this very complicated. So in Ireland, it becomes then a very complicated situation around the land settlement because the Cromwellians, the adventurers, the soldiers who have got land in Ireland, are now very well entrenched. And Charles II really can't afford to alienate them. He needs their support in order to govern effectively. But we have all these Catholics who are feeling, hang on, we supported you loyally during the 1650s, we want our lands back.

So it ends up being all very, very tense. And of course, a lot of conniving and towing and froing and bribery and corrupt. eventually there is a land settlement worked out. Nobody's happy. But we find our friend, the Duke of Ormond, comes back. And by and large, during the period between 1660s, 1670s, Ireland really does very well. We see Dublin becoming that second city of empire. Growing suddenly very quickly now, yeah. Suddenly, very quickly. During the 1650s, we've had something called the Navigation Act put in place, which helps to create a servient economy in Ireland,

but it also then, if you want, drives the provisioning trade. So Ireland is starting economically to prosper on the back of English colonial expansionists. Exporting Irish butter for the first time. Of course, butter, but also salt beef, salt pork. Ireland basically is provisioning the Caribbean. It's hugely important. And later, of course, linen becomes important as well. So it's this story in Ireland of just drawing breath, trying to recalibrate the trauma of the 1640s.

The population starts to grow again. We see continued colonial immigration into Ireland. Some of these colonists also then are using Ireland as a staging post as they go on into the Atlantic world, especially the Ulster Scots as we know them. And by and large, it's a pretty peaceful period. And prosperous. And prosperous. After the catastrophic time in the previous 20 years.

And of course, William, Charles II is well disposed to Catholics. He himself, we know, secretly converts, but he's, you know, he's a practicing Anglican, but very well disposed to Catholicism. Well, Helen, you said, we know he's secretly converts. Tell us more about that. I mean, that's quite the drop in. Tell us more about that. Well, at the Treaty of Dover, I mean, he shows, you know, basically I'm a Catholic. but for political reasons, I have to be Anglican.

So that's just a pragmatic thing on his part. However, his brother, who's the Duke of York, openly converts to Catholicism. We've met him before, I think, in the history of the Royal Africa Company, getting involved in enslaving in Guinea and that whole terrible saga. Isn't it, his letters are burned into the chests of people who are enslaved and traded like commodities? of the Royal Africa Company. It's his initials. So all I'm trying to say here is the stewards are very well disposed to Catholicism. So it's practiced. It's a longer driven underground and Catholics feel that at long last, you know, they're going to be able to go back to

a golden era where they could worship freely. And we see this particularly with the accession of James in 1685 when Charles II dies. So he exceeds. I mean, just with we have to say why here. He exceeds because Charles I second dies and that's it. The succession passes on. Do we know how Charles the second died? Is he an old man when he dies? I think he dies of mercury poisoning. His bedroom is over. He has a laboratory and basically, you know, he's doing all these sorts of experiments and he's exposed to mercury. I don't actually know. That's the theory. But Charles II, of course, has no legitimate male heirs. So, I mean, he's got an illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth. but no legitimate ones.

So his brother then becomes his heir. And that's all fine until the brother has a son. And it becomes very clear that it's going to be a Catholic succession. And that's when things start to get very, very difficult indeed. And is that Bonnie Prince Charlie? That's Bonnie Prince Charlie. Yes. So, yeah, that's the son that Mary of Modna has.

Goes on to be James III. Who we've also met in our Scottish episodes, in Calodon and all those stories. So James II is now a problem for Protestants because there's going to be a Catholic succession. What happens? Well, basically, happy days in Ireland, they're delighted because they think, you know, we're going to have a Catholic king and the whole Catholic order is going to be reestablished. The English Parliament is not so happy.

And here we have effectively they dethrone him and they invite his nephew. Now this is where it's a bit complicated because his nephew. because his nephew is also his son-in-law, a man called William of Orange, they invite him to basically take the English throne. And he, Julie, arrives in England, in what in England is known as the glorious revolutions, nothing glorious about it at all in an Irish or Scottish context. But we see this sort of almost peaceful handover of James fleeing to the continent, William coming into England. Now, Anita will be very delighted to discover there's a piece of my family history here. We haven't had many of my family in the pod for a bit.

But this one is a cracker because on board the ship in the glorious revolution is not only William of Oranges, but his alleged boyfriend who's called Arnold Euse Keppel, who is my great great great great grandfather. Oh, you in the Keppels, that's right. You're all the same clan. And if you go to Hampton Court, there is a passage for. from William of Orange's bedroom to Arnold Youth Keppel's bedroom. And we will say no more on this matter. But it's an unproven allegation.

But certainly in the family, it's always remembered that this was his, should we say, his role at court. So, I mean, describe your Keppel. Well, it's fun enough, in the recent re-hanging of the National Portrait Gallery, an incredibly beautiful portrait of Arnold Hughes Keppel turned up. And it's now in the re-hang. and he's a rather beautiful boy. He does look quite sulky. Yes, I mean, you know, he's good looking.

He's got great features. He's got great features, but he does look like he's just pissed off, if I might say. He's just really annoyed him. He just looks like, you know, you just told him he's got to do the laundry or the washing up. Not really. That's the look on his face. Yeah, well, I'm glad William mentioned this, but it's probably just worth noting that obviously this is contested. It's the most male for this episode.

Yeah. And William, and listen, we may come back to it. We'll talk about William, but just to be very clear, he could be bisexual, because he clearly has relations with his wife, Mary, and she suffers from a number of miscarriages. But certainly if you talk to orange men or members of the lawyers community, they will completely reject any suggestion that he was homosexual. And when this was raised, the late Ian Paisley,

who led the Paisley against Sodomy campaign, Now, this is, remember, homosexuality, male homosexuality was illegal in Northern Ireland? I think it was 1982. I mean, Paisley would have condemned you from the pulpit for uttering such words, Stelrimple. It's a political, it's one of those political footballs. Very much so. You know, this is propaganda from the Catholics. It was never true.

You're just trying to do them down. Gotcha. One person who I'd really like to bring into the conversation now is the Earl of Toconnell, who is going to be quite an important character in this episode. Can you tell us about Richard Talbot? otherwise known as the Earl of Terconell. Oh, Terconnell's a fascinating character. He comes from sort of a very well-off, gentry family, County Cildare, Catholic.

His brothers are achievers. One brother, Peter, goes on to be the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. But Terconel or Talbot goes off to serve in Europe, the European armies. And that's where he meets Charles II and his brother, James Duke of York. and he meets them because he volunteers to go to England to assassinate Oliver Cromwell. Oh, really? Now, that obviously doesn't succeed clearly. What year does he try and bump him off?

In 1655. Is there an attempt? There is an attempt. It fails and he manages to escape. What method do they use? Good question. I don't know that. Maybe somebody listening will be able to tell us.

I just don't know. But he's actually captured, but he manages to escape back to the continent. And that leads to a lot of rumor about whether or not, He's done a deal with the Cromwellians or something, but he clearly hasn't. But it's interesting because at that point, he and James become extremely close friends. And you must remember that this is now the 1650s. These men were all sort of born in the early 1630s, so they're sort of in their prime. And one of Talbot's jobs, or Triconnell's jobs, is to be minder of James's mistresses.

So he becomes a very sort of... Hang on. Hang on. Hang on a minute. Keeper of the mistress. He puts this on a business card. Or a CV. I don't think so. It's not, is it? It just shows you how close that relationship is between James and Tercanel. Okay.

And Tocconnell is going to be important to our story. Why? Because sort of, you know, we've got William now coming back. Toconnell is clearly a Catholic. Ticonell has, you know, Catholic sympathies. And it's at this time when, you know, they're thinking this is a brave new world. Catholics can come out of the shadows. they have a chance of reestablishing themselves.

And then William is chosen by Parliament because William is a Protestant and he won't rock the boat. So what does that do to people like Terconnell? Well, what Tirconnell does is he hates the Duke of Ormond. So he and Ormond are constantly fighting. But he manages to secure influence at court. And thanks to his relationship with particularly James, he's able to get influence back in Ireland.

And really from the mid-1680s, when James becomes king, we see Tercconnell then recatholicising Ireland. So in other words, he purges the Irish army and gets rid of the Protestants and only then has Catholics. How does he do that? He literally fires them. He goes in and gets rid of them and just fires them and he replaces them with Catholic soldiers and particularly officers. But it's much more than that, Anita. He goes in and he tries to, if you want, replace the JPs, the sheriffs, the judiciary, to get rid of the Protestants and replace them with Catholics. So that is extremely effective and he does it in a very short period of time. He sort of clears out the administration, clears out the army and creates a Catholic bureaucracy and a military machine.

But he's done this, though, with James II on his shoulder. Of course he does. When James the second, sorry, I mean, he couldn't possibly do this. There'll be so much grievance back in Westminster about this. as James the second is sitting on his shoulder, as long as he's looking after him, he can do all of these things. But once James is gone, then what happens to Connell? Well, Turconnell obviously continues as the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. And then James himself, remember he's left England, he's gone to France. And it's really important to remember the wider picture here because Louis the 14th, that great French, absolute monarch. The Sun King. The Sun King, Versailles, and all of that.

he offers refuge to James and then James leaves France and arrives in Ireland to be with Terconnell because he wants Terconnell basically to raise an Irish army that's going to allow him then to regain his English throne. So Ireland at this point becomes that backdoor again into England. So just again to get the timing completely clear, how long is James the second in France before he sales for Ireland and reopens hostilities? Well, it's not very long. He leaves England 1688 and he's back in Ireland in March 1689. So it's a matter of months. So he goes there basically, he's not, I mean, we have this image sometimes of the Stuarts being these slightly luxurious, slow moving figures. He's actually straight on it. He gets to France, he raises an army and he's back into Ireland and back

in play. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Louis the 14th. Why is Louis the 14th? Why is Louis the 14th? doing this because it's all about world domination as far as the French are concerned. And Louis XIVth hates William of Orange because obviously he's been the ruler of the Netherlands and has been his big block to power. So we have to take a break in a minute now. But what is happening, I think,

is we're seeing Ireland suddenly finding itself improbably at the centre of European geopolitics. The Sun King now has a new queen on his chestboard and he's moving straight into the middle of the board and challenging William of Orange, who seized the crown of England, Scotland and Ireland. And we're suddenly now going to see Ireland at the centre of everything. Welcome back. So we didn't create a complete pen portrait of William of Orange and the so-called glorious revolution at the last half.

So Jane, tell us, give us a complete picture of this man who incredibly quickly has taken the throne of England, but not yet Ireland. So William of Orange was born in 1650. His mother is Mary Stewart, who is the sister of Charles II and James II. He's grown up in the Netherlands. He's a fluent Dutch speaker, fluent in French, fluent in German. The one language he can't really speak is English.

Physically, he's quite a small figure. He's about five foot six. He's slightly got a hunchback and a hooked nose. As a child, he suffered from smallpox, which left him with an asthmatic wheeze and a very mottled complexion. And then he has this effeminate carriage and we've talked about his sexuality. With my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. Yes, allegedly. Allegedly.

But I suppose what I'm saying is not that big strapping hero that we see on a white horse as he would be portrayed by many. But he's also a great proponent of religious toleration. He's come from the Netherlands, but also he's played this hugely important role of leading this anti-European, if you want, coalition against the great French king, Louis XIV, who has set out to rule Europe. So he's very, very important. And he's been very frustrated by the fact that his uncles, James and before him Charles,

have been part of the French coalition and have not supported the Netherlands. Is he super religious? I mean, is religion a foundation? of his personality in dry? No, not really at all, Anita. He's a great proponent of religious toleration. This is a characteristic actually of the Dutch in this period. Unlike the other nations, many of the other nations in Europe, where it was, if you want, one rule or one faith, he actually encourages religious diversity. So, Jane, in March 1689, James II, arrives with the whole French army in Kinsale. The Irish Catholics welcome him with full

support, and this is a major problem for William. He's barely been, what, six months in this strange country in England. He's had quite an easy time without any major battle to fight in 68, but now suddenly the French are in play, and all eyes are moving to Kinsale and to Ireland. So basically at this point, when James arrives in Kinsale, actually the Jacobites, as they are now being called. Just to explain that, Jacob being the Latin for. for James. For James. So that's why we call them Jacobites.

Control all of the country, except for two really important places. One is Eniskillan, but the other is dairy. I'm just going to do a little bit of a, because dairy is, obviously, we've talked about it, this major fortified city set up by the London company in the early decade of the 17th century. And when the Jacobite forces come to try and take dairy, there's a siege in 1689, the population of under normal circumstances would have been about 1,000. During the siege, that population is inflated. So we will have maybe as many as 8,000.

We don't really know people who are now beginning. Obviously, the siege begins. It lasts for 101 days, so people are starving. There is a famous price list, isn't there, of dogs, cats, rice, rats and mice. And a quarter of a dog fattened by eating the bodies of the slain Irish, costs five shillings and five points. I mean, it's extraordinarily grim. And about a third of the population of the city dies, half of the military garrison.

They shut the doors, the apprentice boys shut the doors and say, no surrender. We're not giving you the city. And it's a siege that goes on and lasts 105 days. It's also a siege that is commemorated every August. And it's where we get this phrase, no surrender from. Which is still a great loyalist chant even today. Even today, exactly, William. But what's so interesting as well is how that no surrender goes through time.

And we have our friend, the Lawrence brothers, Henry Lawrence, in India, in 1857 when he dies. And remember, he's of dairy provenance, allegedly when he dies, his dying words are no surrender. So, I mean, and Paisley would have used that no surrender very regularly during the troubles. But to take us back, the news has arrived that not only has James landed in sale, but he's brought French troops with him and, crucially, money and supplies of war. So Parliament, there's huge alarm in London. One MP stands up and says, if Ireland should be lost, England will follow. And they immediately vote in £700,000. And then William steps up and announced that he's going in person to Ireland, and Parliament votes an even larger sum of

1.2 million pounds, which in those days must be the most colossal fortune. Vast. And so William arrives in Carrick-Fergus in June 1690. His army is, you know, 36,000 well-armed veteran troops. Interestingly, Williams, he's got Danish troops, Dutch troops, French Huguenots, English, and Irish Protestants. Whereas James's army, obviously you've got French troops as part of James's army, but mostly then it's Irish Catholics. So it's these very international forces that face each other. The mercenary Irish, you've been fighting a variety of Catholic courts now rallied to the Stuart court. So this is a big deal. This is the crisis which has been coming ever since the whole Stuart issue

was apparently solved at the so-called glorious revolution. And do you see, sort of, you know, what do you see among the general population? Do you see them rallying to one flag or to other or just thinking, oh God, we are stuck in this again. I thought this was over? Exactly. It's part two of what they've had in the 1640s and 50s.

all over again. So what happens is the Irish Catholics rally, of course, to the cause of James the Second. Irish Protestants then rally to the cause of William of Orange. So it becomes a deeply sectarian conflict. The war of two kings. Well, actually, it's the war of three kings in a sense, because I think Louis XIV is the third king. And you need to see what's going on in Ireland there's almost a side show of what's going on in the continent. And remember that just going back to William of Orange, there are no papal troops who are actually sent, but the Pope does send subsidies to William of Orange,

which is something, again, isn't always acknowledged. Hang on, this can't be right. The Pope sends subsidies to William of Orange. To William of Orange, who's fighting Catholics? Why? Yes, why? Because he sees it as part of this anti-French, coalition on the continent. And this is where it just becomes so complicated. So in Ireland, it's seen

as a Catholic Protestant thing, but in Europe, it's seen as part of European geopolitics. Exactly. Gosh. And that's why the Pope is supporting William of Orange. As I say, he doesn't send troops, he just sends subsidies. So I've got some figures for the kind of the amount of war materials arriving in Ireland at this point. In 1689, for example, the French land, 16,000 saves. neighbours, 3,000 swords, 5,000 muskets, a thousand pair of pistols, 500 carbines, 500 flintlocks, and 100,000 rounds of ammunition. 1690, they get yet more fleets arriving with military experts as well as materials, generals, engineers, artillerymen, commissars.

So suddenly Ireland is filling with the kind of most enormous armies and warswines. The whole of the European military world has landed in Ireland and their readiness. for the big battle, which we will come to call the Battle of the Boyne. So this battle, first thing to point out, is fought on the 1st of July, not the 12th of July. Oh, interesting. We'll come to Okram in a moment, which is fought on the 12th of July. Just to remind people, the 12th of July is the thing that appears on some people's iPhones. It's a bag holiday for Northern Ireland.

Right, okay, as you were. So it is the 1st of July, important. Yeah. And actually, the battle itself, despite its historic importance in, if you want, social memory, itself was a bit of a disappointing affair in that James particularly, now he's an old man, he's 57, he's traumatised. And he's not a general, is he? He's not a military man. Tercone and somebody called Patrick Sarsfield are his generals.

But he's not giving, if you want the Jacobite forces, the leadership that they need, whereas William is coming in and he's much younger. He's obviously a seasoned warrior. and the Jacobites perform poorly and obviously lose the battle. And even though, as I say, this battle has this iconic status, the battle itself isn't a particularly interesting affair. What's important about it is what happens after it. Is it, though, that one side crossed the river,

I mean, do you have the Williamite forces crossing the river and removing the Catholic Irish from their redoubt? So what happens in the battle? What William does is it's in the Boyne Valley, and he sends his men north. And so the Jacobites think that he's leaving and he entraps them. And then they can't get across the river, given the nature of the terrain. And so as a result, you know, they're overwhelmed very quickly.

And about 2,000 people die, two thirds of whom are Jacobites. So straight after the defeat of James, I mean, what happens? Does he stick around or does he just peg it because there's no hope for him? Well, obviously now James has lost Dublin. And Dublin is the administrative, economic, cultural capital of the country. And so he then decides to go back to France to try and sort of rally Louis for more support. And this goes down very poorly with his followers. This is when he ends up sort of being very negatively represented in the Irish language, Gaelic sources,

where they call him, you know, James the Shite. Yes. So James the Shite or James the coward or Seamus Anshaka as a poem, is in Gaelic. Shall I read a bit of it to you? Shamus Ashaka, how you fled across the Boyne Valley is the green bled. Shamus Ashaka as we lay here. Martyrs for falsehoods foddered for your fear. Shamus Ashaka, purveyor of the charm, promise of a new crown, a strong papist arm. Shamus Ashaka of the Stuart's shame as the orange fury ignited aflame. This is a poem of the time, of the period, or one that's written sort of more recently, Jane. And how much How many people in Ireland know this, Seamus Oshaka?

It was written at the time. But over time, obviously, the Irish developed huge sympathy for James. But it was just in the immediate aftermath. He retreats. He goes back down to Duncanon and goes back to the continent. And the Irish basically feel they've been abandoned by the king. And that's where we see these sort of negative representations of him. Now, later on, that does change.

And he becomes this sort of symbol of the bad thing. that have happened to Ireland. Not unlike what happens to Scotland after body Prince Charlie flees, after Collodden, a generation later, the Scots get it in the neck. While the Stuart can escape his men on the ground get it in the neck and suffer the retribution which follows. But they write speed-bonny boat for him. They don't do...

That's a shite. That's Victorian parlour salt. But it's not the end of the resistance, is it, Jane? Because as you've been saying, there's a bigger and often more, in many ways, more important battle that none of us never heard of. So what happens is now the Williamite forces have control over Dublin and the Jacobite forces are on the back foot and they basically drive them to the west.

And probably the most significant and important battle was in 1691. It's the Battle of Ochram. And this is the battle that was fought on the 12th of July 1691. It's a decisive victory for the Williamite forces. Now, Ochram is in County Galway. So we've moved geographically, as I say, into the West. And it was at this, it's a decisive defeat. And Terconnell now is driven back into the city of Limerick.

Now, he dies actually in Limerick. But at that point, the Jacobites decide that they're going to make a peace with the Williamites. And that's why we have the Treaty of Limerick, which is also known as the broken treaty, because the Williamites actually give the Jacobites quite generous concessions in the, yeah, terms. But the Protestant community in Ireland says, oh, no, no, no, William, we're not having this. Now is our opportunity to actually ensure that the Catholic population is never given an opportunity to rise again. We thought we'd done our business in 1650, clearly not. And that's why it's known as the broken treaty.

So, for example, the first civil article stipulates a degree of religious toleration for the Catholics, which William, of course, is happy to agree to, but the Protestants in Ireland are not willing for that to happen. But also the second article related to the conditions that the officers and soldiers surrendered, and they were supposed to be given some protection over their estates. And again, the Parliament in Dublin isn't willing to tolerate that. And then on the foot of this, we see a raft of penal or anti-Catholic legislation being put into force that really ensures that the Catholic population is reduced to political, total subservience. So things like Catholics can't own a horse or own a gun. All Catholic priests are banished. Catholics aren't allowed to leave a farm to their eldest son. If he's a Catholic, they have to. subdivided. So, I mean, it's a very restrictive legislation is brought in now to control the Catholic population. And of course they can't go to university. There's educational restrictions. No, no, there's huge restrictions. Everything is restricted from this point on, William. And it's also at this point. So 7,000 men die at Ockham. It's really the cream of the

Irish Catholic population. And those that survive, obviously the terms of the treaty are broken, So what they do instead is they go in their thousands to serve in the armies, particularly of France. And these are the wild geese, as we know them today. And they pop up all over the place from Ireland to Jacobite to India, exactly. And we see fantastic French Jacobite generals who turn out to be Irish in their ancestry on the beaches of Pondicherry and this sort of thing. Well, it's very interesting that you should mention India because that is going to be the next episode that we have. because we're going to talk about Ireland and India. The parallels and the intertwining of the colonial experience between the two countries is often quite surprising.

It is not exactly as you might expect. But what we've done today, Jane, we've sort of laid the roots of sectarianism that is going to dominate for the next 300 years. In Protestant memory, as we've seen, the Battle of the Boeing is seen as the kind of the moment that the Protestant desentancy is solidified and made conquering. you think that that is a correct assessment. This really is the important moment that it's remembered in posterity. Oh, completely. There's a couple of iconic moments. One is the Battle of the Boyne. The other is a siege of Derry in terms of that Protestant identity. But remember, Cromwell has, and the memory of Cromwell has profoundly impacted Catholic identity. So these historic moments have influenced our DNA here in Ireland, both in terms of Protestants and of Catholics. And I think now,

Ireland looks to a new phase of our history, it's very important how we deal with these very contested moments in the past. It's about bowing to the past without being bound by it. And I think that a lot of work has gone in not just by the Irish government, but also by the British government, and of course colleagues particularly in Northern Ireland, to think about how we can create a shared history that acknowledges in a very respectful way where we differ. And I'll give you a single example of it. There is a commemoration centre at Oldbridge, which is the site of the Battle of the Boyne. And the two key figures behind that, one was a man called Bertie Ahern, who was a former

Prime Minister, T-Shirc of Ireland. The other was a man called Ian Paisley. And Ian Paisley, of course, was the leader of the DUP, the Democratic Unionist Party, and would have been somebody who would have got up in the European Parliament and called Old Red Sox. And I mean, he was very, very, very anti-Catholic in some of his rhetoric during the troubles. But the two of them came together to recognise the importance of the Boyne to both traditions. And the Boeing, of course, is just symbolic of all of these other very important historical moments

in the 17th century that we've been talking about. And just to clarify, Jane, the Orangeman that we see marching at the marching season, each year on our television screens. Every July is marked by pictures of these guys with their fiefs and drums and their boulder hats and their orange sashes heading down the streets of dairy and so on. And the aprons. I guess the aprons are the apprentice aprons.

Are they reminiscent of that? This is all commemorating this. It's all commemorating this. But what it's also commemorating is the subjection of the Catholic population. And that lamb egg drum is very loud and very threatening. and the question is how can we take these sorts of ceremonies that are so important to some communities and so threatening to others

and how can we actually find a space that they can both exist side by side peacefully? And finally, are you optimistic about the future with both of those realities that you've just told us about? How optimistic are you? Do you know, I think Ireland is a really good example of a two-state solution, how we've dealt with partition and hopefully might be an exemplar to others,

although it's not looking too good at the moment in terms of the Middle East or of the Indian subcontinent. You know, it's hundreds of years we have. And then I personally believe that we will see the, if you want, a shared island into the future. And I think Brexit was a body blow to Anglo-Irish relations because I think that would have happened quite naturally in the context of the European Union.

But I still think it's a very important moment that that will happen just in the course. of time. What's key is it happens by the ballot box and not by the bayonet or the armolite. And I think that actually we're in that space. Well, Jane, you're going to be with us for the next episode as well. We're delighted about that. Jane Ormeyer, do read her fantastic book Making Empire. It is an absolutely exceptional read full of the kind of things that you have heard today. And remember, the next episode we are going to talk about India and Ireland and the crossover is Between, till the next time we meet, it is goodbye from me, Anita Arnan.

And goodbye from me, William Duremberg.